{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/epidemiologists/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Epidemiologists", "soc_code": "19-1041", "category": "Science", "us_employment": 12090, "median_annual_wage": 87220 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 45, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 10, "embodiment": 7, "liability_shield": 5, "trust_premium": 9, "judgment_accountability": 14 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "A 10 reflects the split week: line-list cleaning, Poisson and Cox models in R, and drafting the background and methods sections of a grant are already model-drafted, while specifying a case definition mid-outbreak, deciding whether a cluster's excess is surveillance artifact or real transmission, and designing a cohort where the confounder is something nobody has measured yet still take a trained human — and that second set is a real third of the job, not a footnote.", "embodiment": "7 covers the fraction of epidemiologists who do periodic field work — door-to-door or telephone case interviews, restaurant or long-term-care facility walkthroughs, specimen and environmental sampling coordination, PPE-donned site entry during an outbreak — against a baseline of most weeks spent entirely in NEDSS/SAS at a desk.", "liability_shield": "At 5 you sit where the CIC or CPH credential is a hiring preference rather than a statute: the health officer or state epidemiologist signs the quarantine or closure order and carries the legal exposure, and nothing in your analysis requires a personally licensed signature the way a physician's or engineer's does.", "trust_premium": "9 is earned in the relationships that actually gate your data — the infection preventionist who calls you before the lab report posts, the clinic that returns your interview attempts, the CSTE and CDC counterparts who share unpublished cluster detail — but the published MMWR article or annual surveillance report itself is read for its numbers, not for who wrote it.", "judgment_accountability": "14 rests on calls that have no clean procedure and immediate consequences: setting the confirmed-versus-probable boundary when the assay is imperfect, deciding an exposure is causal enough to name a source publicly, recommending school closure or a contact-tracing scope on incomplete data, and defending that inference to press and legislators when a revision would look like error." }, "rationale": "Most of the week is surveillance data cleaning, R/SAS regression, literature review, and writing reports and grant sections — all things current models draft at usable quality with supervision. What holds is designing studies whose confounders aren't obvious, running field outbreak investigations with case interviews and site visits, and standing behind a case definition or exposure conclusion that drives a public health order. The modal worker here is a state/local health department or academic analyst, not a field investigator, so the automatable share of the job is larger than the profession's self-image suggests.", "outlook": "Analytic headcount thins as one epidemiologist plus AI covers what three did, while field investigation, case-definition authority, and public briefing roles hold or grow with outbreak funding cycles.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "If routine surveillance ETL, standard regression scripts, and literature screening are absorbed by tooling, the residual job becomes confounder-aware design, outbreak hypothesis generation, and defending a case definition — a genuine two-tier occupation where the judgment tier is what remains. Watch for state health departments consolidating analyst FTEs while retaining 'epidemiologist III/IV' design and investigation roles.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "If CDC/CSTE or state statute requires a named, credentialed epidemiologist (e.g., CIC or state-registered epidemiologist) to attest to the analytic basis of a communicable disease control order or a reportable-condition case classification — analogous to how a laboratory director must sign out CLIA results — signature authority attaches to a person rather than an agency. Watch CSTE position statements on case definition attestation and post-COVID state public health authority reform bills.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If litigation over pandemic-era orders continues to name individual health officers and epidemiologists as deponents or defendants, and courts credit or discredit the analyst's reasoning under Daubert-style scrutiny in exposure and product cases, the role's ownership of ambiguous calls becomes formally attributable. Watch expert-witness admissibility rulings on AI-assisted epidemiologic analysis and state indemnification statutes for public health staff.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "If field investigation capacity is deliberately rebuilt — funded epidemic intelligence service–style deployments, mandatory on-site environmental assessment for cluster investigations, in-person case interviewing for high-consequence pathogens — the share of the job requiring presence in uncontrolled settings rises. Watch state appropriations for field epidemiology positions and CDC outbreak response staffing rules.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route: the buyer is a government agency or grant funder that purchases an institutional conclusion, not a named human's judgment, and no patient or client chooses their epidemiologist. Even a strong liability shield leaves this an occupation where one signer can attest to work produced at scale, which caps headcount protection regardless of dimension scores." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 6870, "wage": 69660 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 7060, "wage": 69660 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 7410, "wage": 70990 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 7500, "wage": 74560 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 8180, "wage": 78830 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 9430, "wage": 78520 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 10230, "wage": 81390 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 11460, "wage": 83980 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 12090, "wage": 87220 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 76, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "nursing-instructors-and-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 80250, "overlap": 79, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Troubleshooting", "Learning Strategies", "Quality Control Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "health-specialties-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "median_wage": 107310, "overlap": 75, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Equipment Maintenance", "Operation and Control", "Repairing" ] }, { "slug": "genetic-counselors", "title": "Genetic Counselors", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 61, "median_wage": 100040, "overlap": 73, "skills_to_close": [] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }